Table of Contents
Building a culture of belonging in a company is hard. Stanford’s Huggy Rao says that the best cultures create a sense of mutual ownership, where “I own the place, and the place owns me.” I’ve spoken about how simple metrics like eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score) can effectively measure culture.
The Soul at Work
This week, I’ll leave you with a quote from David Whyte‘s treatise The Heart Aroused-Poetry and Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America. It talks about the soul’s need to belong, and it is the true driver of building enduring cultures.
Soul has to do with the way a human being belongs to their world, their work, or their human community. Where there is little sense of belonging there is little sense of soul. The soulful qualities of life depend on these qualities of belonging. It seems to me that human beings are always desperate to belong to something larger than themselves. When they do not feel this belonging they not only feel as if they are running in place, they quite often feel as if they are dying in place. Without belonging no attempt to coerce enthusiasm or imagination from us can be sustained for long.
David Whyte
Vulnerability is Uncomfortable
Reading David Whyte’s 1994 best seller in 2021 was uncomfortable.
Not because he talks about the role of our soul at work,
Not because he talks about the need for creativity in the workplace,
Not because he calls Beowulf a sixth-century consultant.
The book is a reminder that leaders clamoring for a return-to-office in 2021 are still not getting it right.
If your workplace cannot create a sense of belonging, no matter how plush, the office will feel like a soul-sucking cubicle of hell.
